C12 H22 O11
by TheBuggiest
Summary: An Elsen recalls the introduction of sugar, spectre encounters, and several very unpleasant discoveries he's made during his life in Zone 3. Yes, there will be spoilers.


I remember now. They tried to keep me from remembering, but they couldn't do it.

That's why Enoch made the sugar. We in Zone 3 were always the questioners, the ones with the forgotten truth nagging at the backs of our brains. The discontent. I think they put us here originally as a sort of quarantine. Questions are a disease, you see. If you don't cut off the questioners from the rest of the population, pretty soon everyone's infected with them. Why are we here? Who put you in charge? What's the point of going on day after day like this? What came before the Beginning? And so on. With no answers, the symptoms get worse: restlessness, sleepless nights, thinking. Not that our brothers in the other zones were doing much better at the time, but questions wouldn't help matters.

Enoch's a great man, in his way. Lots of authority figures would have buckled under the weight of all those horrid questions, and at first we thought that's what was happening. He shut himself up in his office without telling anyone why. We thought he was just sick of the lot of us and wanted time to himself- except he didn't come out. Two weeks passed, three, and we just never saw him. A friend of mine joked that the director had finally gotten so fat he couldn't fit through the door, then spent the rest of the day looking over his shoulder in the fear that Enoch had found out somehow.

It wasn't until after we'd given up on him that Enoch burst into the cafeteria at lunchtime with a big smile on his face. It's kind of terrifying, to see the Director smile. His eyes are always wide and cold and they just stare at you over that big white grin- but I'm scared of him anyways so my opinions are going to be biased. Either way it was dead silent when he walked in with that white bag in his hands.

"I," he began, voice rumbling so we felt it in our marrow. "I, your Director, have invented a solution to the disquiet that has gripped our manufactory."

Nobody said anything. We just trembled a little and hoped he didn't know what we said and thought while he was hidden in his office.

He lifted the bag into the air and his smile widened just slightly. "Perhaps I should be more clear. I have synthesized pure crystaline bliss for the enjoyment of every subject of Zone 3. Orally ingestible, hydrophillic, organic, bake-able bliss, and out of the kindness of my heart I have decided to share it with all of you."

"E-excuse me."

I almost looked around to see who'd spoken before I realized it was me. Enoch considered me, and I tried not to sink down into my seat.

"Yes?"

"I-I was just wondering how that's, well, possible, Mister Director sir. Bliss is an emotion, and... I... yes."

He laughed. "It is indeed, my literal friend. Perhaps you would like to try some and experience it for yourself."

Everyone was staring at me now instead of Enoch. I tugged at my collar but got up all the same; my face must have been solid gray with embarrassment. He held the bag out toward me without changing his expression in the slightest.

There were a number of little white cubes in there, nothing like the meat sandwich I had on my plate. I picked one out. Each surface felt like sand under my finger tips. Well... he wouldn't have told us it was food if it wasn't food. I popped the cube into my mouth.

Everything melted. The cube melted, my worries melted, the room even melted a little bit. All the hard edges and unpleasant feelings in the world softened into something resembling a feather pillow. For the first time in I don't know how long, my mind held no questions. Just a pleasant white noise.

The Director's toothy grin was like a satisfied cat's when he saw the contentedness radiating through my expression. "There, you see? Just like I told you. Pure unadulterated bliss." He patted me on the head.

I only had eyes for the bag in his hand. I reached toward it, but he pulled it up out of my reach.

"No no, no more just yet. Sugar is very potent, especially concentrated in this form. You won't be needing any more until dinnertime I believe."

"Sugar..." I turned the word over on my tongue as though just saying it would intensify my euphoria. "And... it's for us?"

"Yes, just as I told you. I am nothing if not concerned for the happiness of my subjects, after all. Now! If everyone would form a single file line, please, I will dole out your rations!"

Everyone clambered over each other in their haste to do as Enoch said. Normally I would have found the shoving and noise disquieting, but nothing could bother me when I had sugar coursing through my veins. I just sat back down at the lunch table to stare dreamily at my half-eaten sandwich. I didn't notice as the line dwindled and the others resumed their seats, murmuring quietly to one another about how lovely the cubes were.

The feelings lasted past lunchtime and into the afternoon. Work was no longer mindless drudgery. It was still mindless perhaps, but in a pleasant sort of way. I tended to the machines we used to bottle the plastic without worrying about my sleeves getting caught in the gears or wondering who might end up with any particular bottle or why anyone bothered to buy it when everyone in every zone was surrounded by the stuff. I went through the motions as though it were some well-known dance and I was half-asleep, and the whole thing seemed very pleasant.

Until about an hour before dinner, at least.

The quietness drained away very slowly, as though I were waking up from a dream without the assistance of an alarm. I began to notice little things like a fly buzzing very high up against the ceiling and the ticking of the clock at first. It had seemed nice and quiet before; why did these stupid noises have to happen and ruin the tranquil atmosphere? I tried to hang on to the quietness, but it slipped through my fingers and left me with less and less the more I tried to hold on. And then I had the misfortune to glance at the bottles I'd been working on. None of them were filled with the same amount of plastic.

How could I have missed that? A whole afternoon's work wasted, all because I hadn't had the presence of mind to focus on what I was doing! My dread of what the Director would say jerked me out of the sugar's effects, and I was left scrambling to rectify my shoddy work. By the time I left for dinner, I only had half the amount of bottles ready to ship that I normally did by this time in the evening.

I slunk into the cafeteria with the rest, only half aware of their expectant chattering and eager glances to the lunch line. I was in trouble. What if Enoch said something? It was a silly notion, of course, I wasn't nearly important enough to garner his attention like that, but what if he did?

My miserable reveries were interrupted by a dull boom like thunder cut short. Silence gripped us all as the unmistakable sounds of Enoch's footsteps grew steadily louder. Everywhere heads turned and necks craned toward the door. It slowly swung open.

One look at his face and his empty hands, and every smile in the room vanished. He let the silence sit for a moment.

"I am very, very disappointed," the Director said in his solemn voice. I slid down in my seat until I could just see over the table.

"Doubtless it is my own fault. I thought that my workers would be responsible enough, diligent enough, to continue production as usual after being rewarded with such delectable bonuses. It is clear to me now that this was a grave miscalculation on my part."

The others were sliding down in their seats too. Every eye fixed itself upon Enoch as we waited for his shouts of anger to come raging down on us like a storm. But they never came. He only shook his head mournfully and uttered six words that were far worse than any amount of berating might have been.

"There will be no dessert tonight."

He left us to stew in our dismay.

No one slept well that night. It wasn't the questions that kept us awake this time, but our memories of the sugar and our worries that we might never experience it again. Funny how something we had never so much as heard of before lunchtime had become something we couldn't live peacefully without. The others whispered and bickered quietly to one another about who hadn't been pulling their weight that day. I just lay there staring at the ceiling and hoping with every fiber of my being that somehow we could make up for our shoddy work the next day.

Even with as little sleep as I had, I worked extra hard during my shift to get the plastic levels in each bottle perfectly even with its neighbors. Everywhere I looked others were stacking crates and filling out invoices without talking at all. I'd never seen the bottling plant so full to the brim with industrious workers. The anxiety was clear in every tired face. If the efforts we were putting forth weren't enough to sway Enoch's mind, what would be?

At lunch we sat waiting for Enoch again in dead silence. We hardly dared to look at each other. I think he knew what a state we were in; he let us sit and worry by ourselves for a good quarter of an hour before making his grand entrance. Half the room stood up to see if he had the bag of sugar with him.

He didn't. He had a tray of round brown pastries instead. But his face didn't hold displeasure.

After noticing a few pointed glances in my direction, I stood up. Apparently garnering the courage to talk once meant I was our new unofficial spokesperson.

"Ah, Mister Director sir, can I ask if, um, you have any more of that... the s-sugar?"

Enoch smiled his toothy smile and held up the tray. "Indeed, my bold little friend. You have all done a most satisfactory job today, satisfactory enough for a sweet reward."

I swallowed. "Um, forgive me if this is ignorant, but... that doesn't look like sugar."

"No, indeed it doesn't." He considered one of the cakes for a moment before taking it in one distended hand. "I mentioned before, I believe, that sugar is in fact bake-able, and that is what I have done here. The sugar is mixed into the cakes, which provides an interesting variation in flavor, consistency, and texture. They are most delectable. I urge all of you to try them."

The others cautiously rose and began to form a queue in front of Enoch, and the Director distributed the cakes down the line. Eventually each of us had one clutched between our fingers. I turned mine over in my hands doubtfully before taking that first bite. Relief and bliss in equal measure swept through me like a tidal wave, washing away my worries in an instant. I can only assume the others did the same; it wasn't as though I was paying them any attention with the sugar in me.

I drifted off to work some more not too long after. Somehow it wasn't as hard to focus on getting the bottles filled as it had been the previous day. Before two hours had passed, I realized that this wasn't just my perception. The half-awake feeling of bliss was slipping away much faster than it had last time. My hands shook slightly while the hard, cold reality surged back into my awareness like some sort of magical prison. But I didn't stop working. If I stopped, there might not be any sugar after dinner.

I surpassed my bottle quota easily before dinner, even with my mind reeling and my hands shaking. When I got to the cafeteria everyone else looked about as jittery as I did. Restless muttering and the shifting of bodies in seats filled the room like a physical presence, but it ceased the instant we heard Enoch's approach once more.

He entered with the usual cheery smile before lifting another tray of cakes over our heads. You could feel the tension in the room dissipate.

"Another day has passed, and yet again you have worked at a superb pace," he intoned. It was a bit like listening to a monstrous cat purring. "I am most satisfied, and as a reward for your hard work I will be allowing each one of you a double portion of dessert."

Half the workers in the room cheered, and everyone smiled broadly up at our Director.

We lined up for our allowance of sugar, the same way we had done every other time, and once everyone had his share from the tray we were sent drifting off to bed with our stomachs full and our heads empty.

It went on that way for... I don't know how long. We worked as hard as we could so Enoch would reward us, and he rewarded us so that we would continue our concentrated efforts to keep him satisfied. The only questions anyone asked anymore were how long was it until dessert, or how likely it might be for multiple portions on any given day. Sugar was all that anyone thought about; it looked as though Enoch had finally stilled our inquisitive minds.

But he hadn't taken the spectres into account.

The first sighting was at least a month after Enoch introduced us to dessert. Those of us working in the Area 2 factory near the windows saw it first: a person-sized shape of a pearlescent quality skimming across the surface of the plastic, framed against the smokestacks of Area 3 like something from a painting. It piqued our dulled curiosity for the first time in a good while, and we pressed in close to the glass to get a better view of the ectoplasmic being. But just as we got in position, it dissipated without even reaching our shore.

We were consternated. Even through the haze of sugar, this one new thing in our predictable lives roused us slightly. What was the shining entity that glided over the plastic as though it were dry land, and why would it want to come to the processing plant?

Not long after, Enoch called an emergency meeting in the cafeteria. His teeth gritted together in a semblance of his usual jolly smile once everyone had taken his seat.

"Good evening, my esteemed employees," he rumbled once more. "I assure you there is nothing to be alarmed about."

The crowd burst into anxious buzzing, because that meant that there was most certainly something to be alarmed about. I stood up, knowing the others expected me to say something.

"Why did you call us together, Mister Director sir?" I asked, a bit hesitantly.

"Is it something to do with sugar?" one of the Area 1 workers squealed.

"Ah... yes and no." Enoch pulled a tent-sized kerchief from his pocket and proceeded to dab at his doughy brow. "The first thing I wish to address is the strange apparition some of you reported seeing today. I have reason to believe that this being is, well, a spectre."

Everyone gasped, especially the people who'd seen it. There were stories from the other Zones about spectres, none of them pleasant. I never thought I would see one.

"But as I said, there is no reason to be alarmed!" Enoch's fixed smile widened slightly, as though he thought smiling more would be more reassuring. "You see, these are _friendly _spectres."

We stared at him, dumbfounded. He wiped his sweating face again.

"Yes, most friendly. If you see one, do not run or hide. They are simply curious entities who wish to observe the physical realm and its inhabitants up-close. Simply carry on with your work as though there is no one there, and everything will be just fine."

I sat down, and my stomach clenched. The prospect of working in close proximity to phantasmagoria was almost too much for me. Enoch was asking for a good deal from us. By the whispers and sidelong glances of my co-workers, I could tell I was not alone in these dark thoughts. Enoch pressed hastily on.

"Er, let us move to the second order of business, which is of course the sugar."

The whispering stopped. Every face turned raptly back to the Director, worry etched in every line and fear reflected in every round black eye. He lowered his kerchief.

"Yes, we are going to discuss sugar, namely the rate at which you are consuming it."

"Are we running out?" came a squeak from the left-hand side of the room.

"Oh no, most assuredly not! But we may begin to do so if something is not done, and soon. I do not plan to cut your rations," he added quickly, as the frantic murmuring had begun again. "Only that, ah, some of you may be given different assignments to assist in sugar production. I would not dream of cutting your well-earned wages short, even in the name of industry. As it stands, I cannot produce such vast quantities of the stuff on my own. We need production lines, new machinery, specially trained professionals. By professionals I do, of course, mean you. Some of you. We will continue to bottle plastic, and with new assembly lines plus more efficient organization we may be able to continue on quite as well as we did before."

It was silent in the room as we turned this mighty assemblage of words over in our sugar-encumbered minds. He chuckled, and even this was a mere spectre of his usual thundering laugh.

"As, ah, this is a most momentous occasion, I have elected that we will close out this meeting with an extra helping of sugar. We will not begin running short for some time, so-"

His words were drowned out by a cheer, and the anxiety in the Director's face positively melted away. I couldn't help thinking about the spectres though, at least until I received my cake and went drifting away to do... something, I can't remember what.

The next day we had all but forgotten our ectoplasmic visitor. Enoch kept us busy constructing bits of machinery and ordering more metal from Pentel. With our hands busy and our brains buzzing with the anticipation of more dessert, there was no time to contemplate any unrelated matters.

The day after we saw another spectre. Like the first it drifted across the plastic from Area 3. Unlike its predecessor it actually landed on the shore right outside the clear factory doors. I almost dropped my tools as I walked past. Despite our esteemed Director's reassurances, it was still very unnerving to see a ghastly face with blank sockets staring at you when you didn't expect it. It wavered in the air a moment, and for a split second I was sure the dreadful thing would try to come in.

It laughed, so quiet that I may have been the only one who heard it, and then it vanished.

Even with sugar in my veins and work to be done, I couldn't shake that dreadful laugh out of my head. Everyone else went back to work without anything more than a shrug or a murmured comment on keeping up the pace, but my hands were shaking so I could hardly do anything. I couldn't finish my lunch it was so bad.

Enoch could say what he liked about these ethereal beings, but that had NOT been a friendly laugh. That night I resolved to avoid them if at all possible.

The next morning the foreman disappeared without a trace. He wasn't in his bunk, or lounging in the cafeteria, or working overtime on the new assembly line. No matter how hard we looked, we could only find one clue as to what might have happened to him. One of his bunkmates had heard a strange noise after leaving for work that morning. He thought it had been the foreman having a joke as the latter had still been in bed, even if it wasn't very funny. I asked him what it was, and he shrugged.

"Just a funny cackling sound. If I hadn't known he was in there I might have been spooked; it sounded awfully unnatural."

As soon as I heard a chill went through me like ice water. I knew what had been in the room with the missing foreman.

Enoch had to call another meeting after that. We huddled in our seats, confused and a little indignant, as he took his place in front of us once more. He was sweaty again.

"Now then, now then," he admonished, and the crowd's hissing turned to silence. The Director straightened and put on his most commanding expression.

"Now. I understand that all of you are suffering from turmoil and unrest at the foreman's unexpected leave of absence-"

"He didn't leave; he disappeared!" someone cried. The murmuring started again.

"Oh for the Queen's sake, don't you think I would know if he were transferred or not?" Enoch drew himself up to his full height. We all quailed at his sudden upsurge of anger. "I am the one in charge of Zone 3! I am the Queen's emissary, and when I wish to reassign someone to a different job I report to HER, not to YOU! All of you would do well to remember your place in the hierarchy!"

Talking to Enoch during these meetings had become second nature to me by that point. Enoch's shouts were intimidating, to be sure, but my mind had held questions for too long for me to still my tongue.

"Where is he then?"

Those great round eyes turned to fix me with an unblinking stare. The crowd went quieter than the workrooms during lunchtime.

"What did you just say to me?" the Director rumbled. I stood up, not sure if my hands were shaking from fear or the frustration and anger I had too long suppressed.

"If h-he didn't vanish under mysterious circumstances, Mister Director, then where did you have him sent? Where is he now?"

Enoch swelled like a pasty toad. I had done it now. My spine stiffened as I braced myself for his roars of reproval.

"Everyone else can leave for a sugar break. I wish to speak to this one alone."

The quiet shaking voice he used scared me much more than a shout. All at once the others shot off for the doors, clambering over one another as though in fear of death. I remained standing, still looking Enoch in the face even though I felt I might be sick. All too soon the room was empty except for the Director and myself.

"If you are so curious about where your friend is," he growled, "I will show you myself."

Without warning he reached forward to pluck me up by the back of my shirt. I yelped in surprise.

"No, I can walk!" I squealed but Enoch didn't listen to me. I don't know if he could even hear my voice over his own raging thoughts as he pounded out of the room, out of the building, and towards the tram.

"W-where are we going?" I shouted again. He didn't so much as look at me. He marched past the tram (it was too small to contain him even when he wasn't in a fury) and down the darkened tunnel. I could hear the skittering and hissing of unknown ghouls fleeing from his presence, even if I could see nothing.

Almost nothing. A dull red light flickered from up ahead, too far away for it to illuminate anything.

"What is that?" I groaned as we got closer. It was getting warmer as we approached the glow, and the closer we got the more I realized I did not like the look of it at all. Enoch pounded down the tunnel relentlessly.

"That is where your new station is going to be," he said in a curt, controlled voice. I shuddered and didn't ask any more questions, not until the glow turned into a lit-up doorway, a door into some nightmare world of fire at the end of our long dark tunnel.

Enoch pulled up short when he reached this room and tossed me into it. I bounced off a metal grate in front of a cast-iron furnace, where the fire was, and rolled onto my stomach. It had smudged my clothes with soot, and already the heat was making my brow bead with sweat.

"Wh-where's the foreman?" I asked. He watched me impassively.

"The next delivery of raw product should arrive at this station via assembly line in ten minutes." The Director pointed at a large flap in the wall like a dog-door. "There is a shovel and a hardhat in the locker behind you. Use the shovel to transport the raw product into the furnace whenever it is delivered, and at 5 o'clock sharp you can return to the cafeteria to eat with the others."

"But you said-!"

He slammed the door in my face, leaving me with no company but the furnace.

I climbed slowly to my feet. My knees didn't want to stop shaking as I looked around. Dizzying vapors and vibrating machinery pressed in on me from every direction. The smoke was thick and heady with some sweet smell I almost recognized. It made me retch. I didn't even bother getting out the shovel or the hardhat yet. I only found the corner of the room furthest from the furnace and huddled there, wishing I could go back to the bottling plant.

Ten minutes later a little light flashed over the flap in the wall, and a buzzer sounded. I got up again out of habit more than anything. Buzzers meant there was work to be done, and as frightened and uncomfortable as I was it wasn't something I could ignore. So hesitantly, reluctantly, I opened the locker to retrieve the supplies Enoch had mentioned. Something scraped against the ground behind me as the raw product was fed through the flap. I looked over my shoulder to see what I was dealing with.

It was the foreman.

The shovel and the hardhat dropped to the floor. I don't remember hearing them hit the ground.

The body was just... just lying there in front of me, dropped off like it was nothing more than a sack of clothes to be laundered. I could hardly wrap my mind around it. What was worse, great horrible gashes gleamed around the head and arms, wounds that could only have been inflicted by some savage attack. No ghoul I had ever seen could have caused a violent end like this one.

Enoch... he wanted me to burn it in the furnace.

He had called the body 'raw product'.

Why?

I didn't really want an answer, but it came anyways. Something in the fire shifted so ash flakes flew out through the cracks in the incinerator door. That sickly sweet smell wafted toward me. Too sweet.

God, I just... I knew.

The room swam in front of me in a dark haze. At the same time my throat tightened so that my breath came in hoarse wheezes, and a tremendous pressure started to build inside my head. It felt like it would explode off my shoulders at any second. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to calm down, tried to find some anchor in the panic buzzing like angry hornets in my brain. I didn't want to be Burnt.

The pressure subsided after a few minutes. I opened my eyes to see the body still lying there and choked back a sob. I really didn't have a choice about what to do next.

So... so I caught my breath, and I just shoveled him right into the furnace. I didn't watch, I tried not to think about what was happening while I slammed the door shut on the smell of crystallizing sugar.

More bodies came. I did the same thing with them.

And after what seemed like ages, the 5 o'clock buzzer sounded to signal the end of the workday. It was time for dinner.

The thought made me want to vomit, but I got out of that dreadful room as quickly as I could.

I think people were staring at me when I entered the cafeteria. It was hard to tell through the images still burned in my mind, of blank eyes and dark figures lying prone on beds of flame. The smell of food roused me somewhat even if it wasn't appetizing in the slightest. I looked to the serving line to see that a dessert dispenser had been installed. Cakes came out of the squat, cast iron machine through a little flap like a dog door.

I left early without eating anything.

Sleep deserted me that night. Every part of my body shook and ached in withdrawal. My stomach moaned in protest, my eyes flicked back and forth almost of their own accord, and still I just kept lying there. Desperately I hoped that I would adjust to life without sugar quickly.

The next day was worse. My stomach quieted when I managed to force down some breakfast, but the lack of sleep and constant tooth-rattling shakes more than made up for it. My mind kept straying with perverse longing to the brown and yellow and even pink cakes sitting in the cafeteria practically begging to be eaten.

Five minutes at my new post in the incinerator room turned the guilty daydreams to nightmares again.

And it just kept going on and ON like that. I wanted to tell someone, I did, but the others avoided me if they could. I was a pariah now with my soot-stained shirt and my shaking and my refusal to eat dessert with them. It didn't help that I was on Enoch's bad side either. Maybe they thought that being friendly to me would make him angry, and he would reassign them to horrible unknown jobs just like mine. But the Director had gone back to staying in his office most of the time and conversed with us mainly in the form of memos. For that I was thankful. I didn't think I could face him again, now that... yes.

Weeks passed. More of us disappeared. Some only vanished temporarily as they were assigned new jobs in Area 3, as furnace operators or laboratory workers or who knows what else, and they would come into the cafeteria looking almost as somber as I did. Not that anyone noticed anymore, with how much sugar they were taking in by that point. Others I would find slid through the flap while I was working, ready to be incinerated. I never got used to it. I couldn't. The stacks of bodies and the smell and the dizzying thoughts that swirled round my head now that the sugar was gone made me sure I would go mad or Burnt before long.

And... and I thought I had, when the whispering first started. It was almost indistinguishable from the hiss of valves and fire then: a soft noise, just the one voice, whispering the same words that I couldn't quite make out over and over again. When I noticed I just shoveled faster. There was no point paying attention to delusions. I just needed to work hard, leave when it was time, and hope Enoch would see fit to reassign me again before too long. When I left work that night the whispering stayed behind with the furnace. Sleep was what I needed, I thought, because of course if I could just rest my mind would be off and have time to recover.

I couldn't help but think about the spectres though. They had all come across the plastic from Area 3, hadn't they?

The next day it was louder. I was hearing things, I HAD to be hearing things, except I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye once.

I made extra sure the bodies were completely dead before I burned them that day. It didn't stop the noise.

The third day came, and the whisper came in an accusatory hiss so loud I could've sworn there was someone standing right next to me, buzzing in my ear. It was enough to make me jump, but I obstinately tried to keep working. An hour passed with me pretending to ignore it, my frame trembling like a sapling in a gale, before I saw the movement again. I spun around to the pile of bodies and thwacked it hard with my shovel.

**"Ah, ah!"**

"STAY DEAD!" I shouted, hitting the bodies again. The impact sent heads and limbs twitching with a semblance of life for one wild moment, but they fell still again right after. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing up as everything went deathly still and quiet. Even the furnace went quiet. The only movement was the slow dance of light cast by the smoldering coals on the walls and floor.

"There's nothing there," I muttered to myself. "There's nothing there, and you're just going to drive yourself crazy keeping on like-"

**"What are you going to do?"**

I shrieked and dropped the shovel. A white, person-shaped figure but distorted and with horrible empty eye sockets drifted into my field of view. The spectre's mouth gaped in an open toothy leer like it was preparing to swallow me whole, arms outstretched as though for a hug. God, they're so much worse up close; looking at it almost froze the blood in my veins. I backed toward the door, gasping and wheezing for breath.

"S-STAY AWAY!" I stuttered. "I d-don't care what Enoch says, I don't want to die!"

**"Ah, that's curious." **Its voice hissed in that same whisper I'd been hearing for days as it bobbed half a meter above the floor. **"That's curious indeed, ah ha."**

"W-what's curious?" My voice was a barely audible squeak of fright. It chuckled at me as though I were some funny toy it might smash against the floor on a whim.

**"That you are afraid to die."**

"No, th-that's SANE!" I edged toward the door slowly, eyes fixated on the phantasm. It tilted its head to the side without the slightest change of expression. Lazily, so lazily it drifted forward.

**"You don't remember anything, do you?"**

I paused with my hand on the door knob. The spectre's grin widened as it drew closer and my knees knocked together, but for some reason I couldn't move. It was right beside me, and I couldn't move.

**"You don't remember why Enoch made the sugar. You don't remember the dark from before the beginning, or why your soul doesn't want to stay put in its body. You don't remember why they don't want you to remember."**

"I-I..." I began, then flinched. A memory flashed through my head for just an instant, a memory of cool and dark and friends murmuring comforting things all around. For some reason it terrified me.

The creature was only centimeters from me now. I could smell grave dust and ash and something rotten coming off of it.

**"You are an **_**abomination,"** _it crooned almost lovingly. **"The Queen was made to make the world, wasn't she? But she couldn't make **_**everything.** _**She couldn't make people."**

"N-no, you're wrong!" My voice was too loud, and a fear that had nothing to do with the monster in front of me gripped my soul. For once in my life, I didn't want answers. "She made us! I r-remember that part, and if you're going to kill me then just get on with it!"

**"Yessssss, ah ah! She made bodies, but there wasn't anything inside them." **It touched my arm with a cold, slimy appendage. It was like death. **"Don't you know why people try to escape from their own flesh sometimes? Why they distort and go black and Burnt?"**

"NO, STOP IT!" I jerked backward into the wall. My hands flew to my head as though I thought it might just pop off then and there. Another memory flashed inexorably through my poor brain, of blinding light and being dragged kicking and screaming from the Nothingness. The fantastical being leaned toward me, grinning and shaking as though it were about to deliver the punchline of an uproarious joke.

**"You DIED," **it cried gleefully. **"You died when the world ended, and she stuffed you in a meat puppet just like all the rest, and the fat one made the sugar so you wouldn't remember when-"**

"IT'S NOT TRUE! I'M ALIVE!" Blind panic and anger gripped hold of me. I shoved the ethereal thing backward, but it surged back laughing at the top of its lungs.

**"YOU'RE DEAD INSIDE!" **it squealed in an ecstasy. It threw me to the floor and hunched like a wild animal over its prey. **"YOU'RE ALL DEAD INSIDE, JUST LIKE MEEEEEE!"**

I don't remember when I grabbed the shovel. I just remember the startling thought that if spectres were solid enough to kill people, then perhaps they were solid enough to die.

I expected a solid crunch when the shovel made contact, or at least a resounding clang like when I had hit the bodies. But the phantasm just looked at me in surprise, and there was a whoosh and a tearing noise as the shovel went right through. It didn't have guts, but the shredded ectoplasm fell writhing and wriggling to the ground like maggots in a grave. It was dead. Or... gone, at least. Maybe it just went back to the Nothingness.

I stumbled to the door and ran out into the tunnel. The buzzer was going off again, and I didn't care. I wasn't looking at any more dead bodies. There were more pressing things on my mind, like the flood of memories that started to pour in relentlessly. They haven't stopped since, and _I remember now._

There was a dog, I think I had a dog, and an ocean but it wasn't plastic. There were faces unlike any I've seen since, and odd clear smoke that you could look through for miles and miles and a house that was mine instead of a bunk with a swing made out of a tire. There were parties and smiling happy people who could choose their lives for themselves and blinding light and shrieking and terror and all of it dissolved and I can't I just can't anymore!

I-I can't hold on. It's too much for my head to hold; even now I can feel it swelling up with the pressure, and I need... I don't know what I need, sir, but that's what happened before I found myself on the tram tracks with the lights from the train coming right at me. I know you aren't from around here since you don't have a tie. You have no reason to do anything

but _please_

_if yOU COULD JUST_

**_HELP_**


End file.
